A Five Year Old's Solace
by KarmaHope
Summary: When A Five-Year-Old Harry Potter is ordered to sit on the bench while Dudley plays in the park, he never imagined that he would end up making a new friend- A friend that he would meet again six years later in Hogwarts! Two-shot.
1. A Five Year Old's Solace

_Hi, all! So I decided to take a break from the rest of my stories and write this cute little one-shot that I thought of just a few minutes ago. Oh, and for extra information, I'm soon going to be co-writing another fanfiction with Harmony Goldstar, so I hope you'll read that as well. Please check out some of her stuff!_

_Harry doesn't talk as much like a little kid because of his home life... Just so that I don't get any flames about that._

_Anyways, enjoy!_

"HARRY!"

A five year old Harry Potter quickly shut his book and scrambled out of his closet under the stairs, avoiding various cobwebs in the process. Whenever someone yelled for him like that, it was never good. He poked his head cautiously around the corner.

"Yes, Auntie?"

"Get over here and put your jacket and trainers on. I'm taking Dudders to the park."

"But why me?" He asked quietly and froze, immediately regretting his words. He cringed, waiting for the lash that was sure to come.

But the blow didn't come. Instead, he heard Aunt Petunia sigh.

"Because Vernon is at work and I can't find a babysitter! Now not another word!"

Harry ducked his head and followed his relatives meekly out the door, Dudley turning back and sticking out his tongue at him. He pretended he hadn't seen him, instead staring down at his shoes.

Ten long minutes later, they arrived at the park. Aunt Petunia brusquely led the two boys over to one of the park benches. Setting down her purse, she took Dudley's coat and laid it on top. As soon as her hands were free, she turned her glare onto the unfortunate tagalong.

"Sit here. Don't get up. I'm going to be over there," she said, pointing to a bench near the climbing apparatus. "Don't think I'm not watching."

Harry nodded, sitting as he was told. The bench was cold and uncomfortable. Harry scooted back so that he was against the back of the bench, his legs dangling over the edge. He swung them back and forth, breathing in the crisp fall air. He closed his eyes, pretending that he was with friends, that they were there with him, and that he didn't have to obey his aunt. He was deep into his daydream when he heard a small giggle from in front of him. He opened his eyes. A small brown-haired girl was standing in front him.

"Hewo! What's your name?" She asked excitedly.

Harry quickly glanced over at his aunt, making sure that she wasn't watching before replying in a hushed tone, "Harry. Harry Potter."

"Hawy! Can you play with me?"

Again, Harry shot a look at Petunia, who was still watching Dudley like a hawk. "I can't. I have to stay here," he told the girl quietly.

"Why?"

"Auntie. She told me I had to."

"That's not vewy nice! I'm going to go talk to Mommy and Daddy!"

"No, don't!" Harry whisper-cried out, but the girl had already left.

"Mommy, Daddy? There's a boy over there who doesn't seem happy," the girl pouted to her parents, pointing to Harry.

"Is that so? Why not?" Her mother asked gently.

"His auntie told him to sit there."

"Who's his auntie?"

"He didn't tell me. His name's Hawy Potter."

Her mother looked over at the lonesome boy. She observed how his gaze kept flicking back to the sour-faced woman on the other side of the playground. "Okay, sweetie. Mommy's going to try to help him, okay?

The girl nodded as her mother crossed the playground.

"Excuse me Mrs. . . ."

Aunt Petunia glanced up sharply at the other woman. "Dursley. Petunia Dursley."

"Mrs. Dursley. My daughter noticed that your son was sitting by himself over there. She was wondering if he could play with her. She was very insistent."

"And you are?" Petunia asked suspiciously.

"Ellie Granger. This is my daughter here," she said, resting her hand on her daughter's head, who had come to stand by her mother.

She looked up at the sour-faced woman with her best puppy dog eyes. "Pwetty Please?"

Petunia sighed, not taking her eyes off of Dudley. "Fine. And he's not my son. He's my nephew."

This passed over the young girl, who jumped up and down before running over to the black-haired boy on the bench.

"HAWY! YOU CAN PLAY WITH ME!"

Harry jumped. His eyes widened at the sight of the girl running towards him. He couldn't believe his ears. Was this some cruel trick? He looked around frantically, searching for any sign of a joke. His eyes fell on who he assumed was the girl's mother. She nodded before walking back toward her husband.

Scooting off the bench, he landed on his feet with a thump. He turned to his young savior. "Thank you," he told her. "What's your name?"

The girl screwed her face tight in concentration. "I can't pwo- I can't pwonounce it. Her- Hermy- Herminny?" She guessed. "I'm five!" She said, holding out a hand with fingers outstretched.

Harry smiled at the girl. "I'll call you Minny. I'm five too!"

The girl Harry called Minny smiled as well. "Follow me!"

Harry ran after her, nearly catching her as she ran away. Suddenly she stopped abruptly. "I know! Let's play witches!" She picked up a small stick from the ground. "This is your wand." She searched for a little longer and found a larger stick. "And this is your bwoomstick!"

As she searched for a 'wand' and 'broomstick' of her own, Harry started to protest. "I can't be a witch! I'm a boy!"

"Fine. You can be a wizard!"

Harry smiled at his friend as he straddled his 'broomstick' and grabbed his 'wand' in one hand. "Okay!"

Minny laughed. "Bet you can't catch me!"

"Bet I can!"

"Fweeze!" She yelled, pointing her 'wand' at him.

"HEY! That's not fair! Unfreeze!"

Finally, they collapsed on the grass at the other side of the park, their 'wands' and 'broomsticks' nearby.

Harry lay flat on the ground completely exhausted while Minny made a daisy chain.

"That was more fun than I've had in a long time!" Harry exclaimed.

Minny finished her daisy chain, forming it into a circle. She leaned over and put it on Harry's head.

"What's that for?" He asked, bewildered.

"You're my fwend, wight?"

Harry froze, stunned. He hadn't had a friend before. "Yes, I am," he realized. "I am your friend."

"Good." Minny leaned over again and kissed his cheek before pulling back. They looked at each other for a moment and started laughing.

"HARRY! WE'RE LEAVING NOW!" Petunia called to her nephew.

"Coming, Auntie!"

Harry ran up to her on his 'broomstick' with his 'wand' in his hand and the daisy chain in his hair. "Look Auntie! I'm a wizard!"

Aunt Petunia turned chalk white. She stared at him wide-eyed before grabbing his wrist harshly and dragging him away.

"Now, now, there will be no more fantasies of yours." She took the sticks and broke them both. "Now come along, it's time we got home."

Harry wasn't listening. He looked once more over his shoulder at the girl he had found solace in, even if it was only for an hour or two. He smiled, and she waved back.

"Bye-bye, Hawy! I had fun!"

He broke into a grin, unable to contain himself any longer.

Before his aunt dragged him back to his life under the cupboard, he yelled out a few more words to her.

I did too!

_Please review- I wrote this at- well- it was midnight when I started and it's now 1:37 am, so . . . yeah. I hope you liked it!_

_Oh, and just to let you know, 'trainers' is the British word for 'sneakers.'_


	2. An Eleven Year Old's Reunion

_Hello. I told you that this story was probably gonna stay a one-shot, yet here I am, making it a two-shot. I tried to do this a few months back, but it just wasn't grabbing me then. So . . . here's _A Five Year Old's Solace_, take two._

_And, I also must take this time to tell any Fullmetal Alchemist fans who are reading this, if you haven't already, you might want to look at my FMA story, _In Truth, None of it Was Fiction. _I will be updating that one later today._

_Anyhow, you probably want to read this story. So I'll let you._

An eleven-year-old Hermione Granger jittered anxiously on Platform 9 ¾. When she had received her letter earlier that summer, she couldn't believe it! She, an ordinary girl with ordinary parents, had actually been recognized as a witch!

She had always believed in magic, though she had never known why. Maybe there was just something exciting about how it completely defied any and all of the laws of science she had been raised to believe in. In fact, she had been quite concerned that her parents wouldn't believe her when she showed them the letter from Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. She would never understand why they did.

Hermione quickly decided that shuffling from one foot to the other impatiently wasn't going to help her cause. Grabbing her trunks, she quickly backed up to one of the benches that lay on the platform. After sitting down, she flipped open her trunk and grabbed the book that was lying on the top: _Hogwarts: A History_.

After discovering that she was, in fact, a witch, she had quickly tried to get her hands on as many wizarding books as she could. She would hate to show up in a completely new world, just to be ignorant about it. But- she was curious. There was one name that kept popping up, in almost every book that she read. A name that she recognized. One that she never thought she would hear again. _Harry Potter_.

It had been troubling her for the past month or so, since she had first seen it. She had vague memories of a young boy, a park, and running around a field on sticks. Surely . . . they couldn't be the same person? The book talked about a boy who had survived a killing curse, a celebrity among the wizarding world. The boy in the park looked as if he knew nothing of it.

Well. She would just have to find out, some way or another.

A couple minutes later, the train rolled in, blowing steam everywhere. Squinting, she grabbed her bags and made her way into the train cars, finding an empty booth. _(A/N- More train cars? Uhg.)_ After pulling her Hogwarts robes out of her trunk, she arranged her baggage on one of the overhead racks. There was no point in delaying getting changed, so she quickly dressed in her new robes.

She denied the offer of the snack cart. She really wasn't all that hungry- she suspected it was nerves. Hoping to calm down a bit, she left her compartment to take a walk down the train.

After reading about the different houses in Hogwarts, she found it fun to look into the different compartments to try to predict what houses her soon-to-be classmates were in. Those with their noses in a book were sure to be Ravenclaws, the ones with a determined spark in their eyes would be Gryffindor, and then the sinister-looking ones would be Slytherin. Those she couldn't identify she just put into Hufflepuff.

She was almost at the end of the train when she came across one compartment, containing two boys. One was red-headed and sorta wimpy-looking, while the other had dark hair and glasses. She heard the two of them arguing over a 'spell' that the red-headed boy had 'cast' over his pet . . . rat.

Unable to contain herself, she strode into their compartment, telling them off. She was just leaving as she caught the dark-haired boy's lips move.

_Minny?_ Harry mouthed, unable to quite comprehend it. He hadn't forgotten that one day, years ago, when he found the only friend he had ever made back at the Dursleys' house. They had played . . . witches and wizards. He only now found the irony in that.

But there was no way that the _both_ of them were _actually_ witches or wizards. He was still having a hard time believing that _he_ was a wizard. It just seemed so surreal.

The girl-who-he-thought-was-Minny paused for just a second, before exiting their compartment and walking down the hall. Harry was left wondering whether it was actually her or not.

"Well, that was rude," Ron said through a mouthful of candy.

Harry supposed that his new friend could see it that way, considering how she had walked into their compartment and basically started preaching to them. But . . . he forgot about that as he held onto the hope that his old friend and that girl were the same person.

_Weeks went by_. Harry never did find out if they were the same person, much due to the fact that his _new_ friend, Ron, had decided that Hermione was a know-it-all stuck-up _brat_ that should be avoided. Harry was torn. He wanted to talk to the girl Hermione, but he didn't want to lose his friendship with Ron to do so.

He ended up cornering her in the library one night, after returning a few books that he borrowed earlier that week. She was in the nonfiction section, sitting at one of the tables, reading one of her tome-like books. He walked down the aisle cautiously, not quite expecting what he would get.

"Excuse me?" he asked softly.

She jerked around. "Oh! Harry. I didn't see you there."

Oh, shoot. How should he do this? "Uhhm . . ."

"Yes."

"What?" He was confused. He hadn't even asked his question yet!

"I said, 'yes.' Yes, I am the girl you met six years ago."

So this meant . . . "You knew it was me?"

"Well . . . the memory of the day itself is kind of fuzzy. But I recognized your name. I didn't really think it was true, though."

Harry smiled. "It's kind of ironic, really. We played witches and wizards that day in the park."

She laughed. "It's not so much 'playing' anymore is it?"

"No, not really."

The two of them were silent for a few minutes, having run out of things to say to one another. Finally, Hermione spoke up.

"I tried to find you, after that day. I looked the Dursleys up in the phone book when I was around seven. The man who answered the phone was really rude, though. He wouldn't let me talk to you."

Harry cringed. "Sorry about that."

She shrugged. "After that I just sort of forgot. I'm sorry."

"That's alright." Harry paused. "Uhm, listen, Ron doesn't really like you, so I'm not sure if I'll be able to talk to you after this, at least while he's around."

"I'm sure he'll be okay with it eventually," she responded.

The two of them talked in the library until curfew, and they had to go back to their dorms.

"I honestly thought I would be put into Ravenclaw," Hermione admitted to Harry as they walked back.

Only a few days after that was the incident with the troll in the bathroom. After that, the 'Golden Trio' couldn't be separated for anything. Harry never told Ron that he knew Hermione before they came to Hogwarts, or that the two of them had made friends before the troll incident. There were some things that his friend just didn't need to know.

_I hope that was okay. I don't like how the ending went, but it could just be me._

_Anyhow, I think that's as far as I can take it now. I can't really see how I can extend this story further . . ._

_And do you know how hard it is to spell 'talk' when you're thinking it in a British accent? You just want to spell it 'tolk' instead . . ._

_So, anyways. That's me. I will see you all again if I write another Harry Potter story, or if you read my other stories . . ._

_Sayonara!_


End file.
